The pleurisy eventually caused to me lose about 25% of my left lung so now when I’m out of breath all the time, that’s one of the reason’s. The embolism started in my left leg and traveled up through my veins (or arteries, not sure which) and logged itself in the right side of my lungs. Since I had the infection in the left lung and all the fluid and the embolism on the right lung, my lungs suddenly shut down completely. I was laying in bed in the ICU and all of a sudden, I couldn’t breath. I was gasping for breath. I guess some kind of an alarm sounded because I was suddenly surrounded by several nurses and doctors giving me advise on how to breathe.
It didn’t last long and I got though it, but they told me later that I had total respiratory failure and was very close to dying. Needless to say, I didn’t, but I’ve had lung problems ever since.
Besides the breathing breakdown, I really only have two memories of that stay in the hospital. One was that I was able to watch the entire mini-series “Roots” on TV. My second week in the hospital, they played that series and I watched the whole thing. It was really good and I enjoyed it very much. The other memory was when Karen got to bring the kids up to see me. I think she had to wait until I got out of the ICU in order to bring the kids in so it had been 2 or 3 weeks since I had seen them. I remember Matt and David being kind of shy and standing at the foot of the bed and not really sure if this was their dad or not. They didn’t know what to make of all this fuss people were making over me. Karen was holding Kimmy, though, she was just about 15 months old. She carried her in the room and her eyes lit up and she got this big smile on her face and she reached out both arms for me to take her. It was a very precious moment for me. Kim had these huge brown eyes when she was little and to see them light up like that made me very grateful to have her as a daughter. I will never forget that day.
I got out of the hospital the end of January or the first of February. All together, I spend about 5 weeks in it. I couldn’t go back to work right away, so I spent the time at home, recuperating. It wasn’t until May that I went back to work part time and then moved up to full time in June. 6 months taken out of my life. For almost the rest of the time I lived in Minnesota, I got bronchitis two or three times a year. My lungs were weak and the disease was easy to catch. It wasn’t until I moved to Utah and a dry climate that it stopped. I’ve only had bronchitis a couple times in the 13 or so years I’ve lived here. As much as I liked living in Minnesota, I don’t think it liked me.
Dad